I Interview Playwrights Part 392: Sean Gill

Sean Gill

Hometown: Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.

Current Town: Brooklyn.

Q:  Tell me about the Dreams of the Clockmaker.

A:  Dreams of the Clockmaker is an unusual piece and not your typical one-woman show, particularly in terms of its scope, mood, and tonal shifts. We follow our enigmatic lady on a stage as she regales us with troubling visions of a dystopian future, enacts a low-rent 80’s magic show, and bewilders us with Dust Bowl occultism while reliving her captivity in the stately mansion of a master manipulator known only as “The Clockmaker.”

Q:  What else are you working on now?

A:  I’m looking to mount a full production of another mysterious, otherworldly play of mine called Laurie Deacon and the Night Caller, and I am in the process of writing a new one, which may or may not involve time travel and 13th Century monks. I have several films in the works including a neighborly revenge flick called Slumlord Shitheel Slaughter, an ode to watery beer and urban archaeology called Puttin’ on the Schlitz, and a freakish tale of puppetry and class warfare (set in a cesspool) called Fresh Piss.

Q:  How does filmmaking inform your playwriting and vice-versa?

A:  My plays often come across as cinematic, from the perspective of sound (I always do my own sound design) to visual elements. For example, in my play Aenigma, I envisioned (and director Rachel Klein effectuated) the playback of a blackmailed videocassette, complete with actors rewinding and fast-forwarding and simulating tape anomalies. In terms of my plays informing my films, I often make silent films which require a very particular form of theatricality, and I’ve recently moved toward puppetry and set-building, occasionally on a miniature scale.

Q:  Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.

A:  Since I was a boy, I’ve been a careful observer of the miniature comedies and tragedies that play out between the lines in our day-to-day lives, and there’s a certain amount of material that naturally flows from these observations. I remember when I was five or six, a nearby city park would have “goldfish days” whereupon a wading pool would be filled with goldfish, and excitable youngsters armed with tupperware and plastic bags would paddle in pursuit of that simple joy of cradling something alive in their hands. I didn’t participate, because my family wouldn’t acquiesce to a pet, goldfish or not, so I simply watched. After some time had passed and the kiddie frenzy had abated, I remained. In their wake, the children (guided only by momentary euphoria and not with any ill intent) had left behind hundreds of squished and trampled goldfish, grotesque and oozing. I felt a profound despair. I looked around, and no one seemed to notice. I didn’t shake the sensation for days.

On a lighter note but in a similar vein, some years later at Halloween time, our elementary school cafeteria offered Vampire Popsicles with a jet-black exterior and a runny, sticky “blood” interior. Designed to appeal to “kids who love gross things,” they fell flat amongst the student body because they were simply too gross. I envisioned a whole storyline that there was some young, enterprising lunch lady who’d put her ass on the line, arguing in that theoretical cafeteria board room (in the midst of boring Fla-Vor-Ice hardliners!) that the kids would really enjoy the change of pace. To make a long story short, eight months later, at the hottest, balmiest Field Day in memory, the unused Vampire Pops were rolled out at the end of the day as the only means of refreshment for an army of sweat-soaked, severely exhausted youth. The children, myself included, tore into the Vampire Pops with horrifying voracity, turning our mouths inky-black and inadvertently covering our bodies with goopy blood sauce. Even calling it 'goopy' or “gooey” insinuates more rigidity than it deserved. As soon as you hit the center, it was like you were holding a wine bottle upside down above your face and pulled out the cork. If you weren't prepared, your face, hands, and shirt would be showered in sticky, viscous, bloody fluid. It was ludicrous– they might as well have handed us squirt guns filled with maple syrup! We resembled the aftermath of a massacre. The Vampire Pops had transformed a grueling, mandatory school activity into a stunning vision of gory, apocalyptic chaos, and I delighted in it. I’m unsure if others saw the full extent of the situation’s absurdity, but I was happy to take a step back and chronicle the miniature comedy.

Q:  If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?


A:  Gone are the halcyon days of profound pageantry and breathtaking spectacle, of cramming seven hundred dancers and cigarette-smoking extras and dangerous, deranged animals onto one rickety stage. Or maybe they never happened. Perhaps it’s merely the fever-dream of an audience member who’s seen too many Busby Berkeley numbers and Cecil B. DeMille epics. Anyway, at Broadway prices, I basically want to be seeing the Sack of Rome or the last days of Pompeii.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  This is a tough one, and there’s so many to list, so let’s say Euripides, Eugene O’Neill, Antonin Artaud, Yukio Mishima, David Mamet, Ellen Stewart, and Julian Beck. And though it’s technically not “theater” in the purest sense, the teleplays of Rod Serling. And as long as we’re going that far– hell, the Grand Guignol splendors of Alice Cooper live!

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Many kinds, and across many spectrums. Brazen, ball-squashing gutter theater. Doily-enshrouded theater of the upper crust. Theater of exquisite craft featuring costumes, puppets, spectacle, or what-have-you that’s not prefabricated nonsense, but carefully built and rigorously fashioned by men and women with their own hands. Work that lives and breathes with the creators’ joy. Work that lives and breathes with the creators’ torment.

Q:  What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?

A:  Surround yourself with friends and collaborators who excite you, whom you trust completely, and whose company you enjoy; people who aren’t afraid to be brutally honest, yet are willing to give you the benefit of the doubt as you bounce your loopier ideas off of one another. Cultivate other interests, savor your free time, and don’t let your day job(s) get the best of you.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Well, of course, there’s my show Dreams of the Clockmaker http://vimeo.com/27958787, which runs from October 17-30th at the Wild Project, but I would also sincerely recommend Rachel Klein’s morbid fantasia The Tragedy of Maria Macabre http://vimeo.com/28088659 (for which I did the sound design), which runs semi-concurrently with Clockmaker at the Wild Project from October 20th-30th.

I Interview Playwrights Part 391: David Bar Katz

David Bar Katz

Hometown:  Philadelphia, PA

Current Town:  New York City

Q:  Tell me about your upcoming show with LAB.

A:  The play is called The Atmosphere of Memory. The title's taken from Tennessee Williams's stage directions for The Glass Menagerie. It's a bit of a send-up of narcissistic writers who think the traumas of their lives and their dysfunctional families are so interesting they deserve to be plays. Though it is based on some major drama that occurred in my life when certain members of my family were offended when they saw themselves portrayed in Freak. I thought I had disguised them well as Latinos, but I was mistaken. I'm really proud that it's a LAB play, not just that it's being done there but that the way it was developed was uniquely LAByrinth. We are predominantly a company of actors, though many members write and direct as well, and I wrote the play specifically for LAB company members like Ellen Burstyn, Melissa Ross and David Deblinger. The play wouldn't have come into being without them.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I have a pilot at Showtime about a sobriety coach that I'm working on, a few screenplays in development, one an adaptation of a Grant Morrison graphic novel called Joe the Barbarian that I'm especially excited about, being a comic book geek. Also a sci-fi tween novel called Chronicles of the Chosen and many plays in various states of undress.

Q:  Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.

A:  When I was only six I led an uprising at the Terezin concentration camp. At the time I didn't think it was a big deal, but my therapist seems to think I should look at how it effected me more closely. I was a solitary kid and read a lot of comic books and Philip Roth at an inappropriate age. My step-father taught film studies at Penn so in an age before TCM and video rentals I got to see a lot of old films projected in my living room. So the actors always looked life-sized which I guess is why I like theater the best.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  O'Neill, Avram Goldfadn, Tennessee Williams, Neil Simon, Sondheim. I can't write a word without one of them looking over my shoulder or touching my hand.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Passion. When you sit in the theater and you see a writer, director and actors pull their hearts out and leave them on the stage.

Q:  What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?

A:  Write in long-hand. Seeing something on a screen in word or final draft creates the illusion of being done.

Coming up next

Fat Cat Killers in Philly

Nerve in Halifax

New York One Min Play Festival at Primary Stages

A Night of Burlesque to Benefit a production of my play Elsewhere in NYC

What else?  A couple productions of Pretty Theft in the winter.   Why Overhead and Herbie in NYC.  Another couple of Nerve productions.  Two productions of Hearts Like Fists.  Two productions of Incendiary.  and a web series.

I Interview Playwrights Part 390: Daniel Alexander Jones

Daniel Alexander Jones

Hometown: Springfield, Massachusetts. McKnight Neighborhood in the 1970s.

Current Town: New York City. Manhattan. Inwood.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  I just recorded the new music project for Jomama Jones (my alter/altar-ego) In LA, with composer Bobby Halvorson. I am also collaborating with Bobby on a musical adaptation of a 107 year-old children's book. In NY, I am putting the finishing touches on my newest play, Phantasmatron, which is a speculative historical drama set in 1864 involving Mary Todd Lincoln, Elizabeth Keckly and a pair of Spiritualist twins. And, I'm starting the academic year at Fordham University, where I am an Assistant Professor; I'm very much looking forward to working with our students - they are spectacular people.

Q:  Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.

A:  In Summer 1977, just after the birth of my brother, I contracted a strange illness. My body ached, I was continually feverish and I lost most of the meat off my bones. The pediatrician put me on all sorts of medicines, none of which worked; I was waylaid for half the Summer. All I could tolerate was ice cold Hi-C. Though I'm pretty sure I had always felt connected to "the other side" so to speak, i.e. aware of the presence of energies and entities not in this reality, somehow during this extended fever dream state, with my physical self so weakened and in unexpected isolation, I experienced my first true lifting of the veil. The warp and weft of time loosened and a visceral sense of the precarious pulse of life accompanied my every waking moment. I'll never forget the first day I was allowed outside. The sunlight was electric honey. I could hear the tones of the bees flying through the air and literally feel them land on the plump clover and feel the bend in the stems of the tiny flowers. It was almost too much. Before I had language to describe it, I was experiencing the musical idea of all things. I saw both the thing itself, and its living blueprint simultaneously. That fever changed me. I think it removed some part of me from unconscious connection to other people and things; there's a tinge of isolation in me that I can trace back to this time. Most importantly, it cemented something in my perceptive abilities; I see more than what's immediately visible. Thinking about this question makes me realize that as an artist I consistently seek to theatricalize unseen architectures.

Q:  If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?

A:  Changes are already underway and the heat is being generated outside traditional structures. The rich examples provided by many contemporary musicians and visual artists (who have simply and directly cultivated new audiences and broad platforms) motivate me to get up and get moving in service of my dreams and those of my colleagues. Direct address. Pearl Damour's recent How to Build a Forest; Aaron Landsman and Mallory Catlett's evolving City Council Meeting, Erik Ehn's Soulographie and Sharon Bridgforth's upcoming River See, are but four examples of artists creating networks and partnering with forward-acting institutions to make work that seeks to engage beyond typical structures. The American theatre writ-large does not seem to want the kinds of change that I, or many of my collaborators, would wish for it. Therefore I have learned to pour the full measure of my desire for change into my own work. I am hugely inspired by and drawn to artists and institutions who have planted themselves firmly in this twenty-first century and are committed to dynamic, collaborative exploration of the possibilities for live art in the lives of all sorts of American people in all sorts of modalities. The comfort of knowing exactly what story will be told, exactly how it will be told and exactly who will be telling it leads, in my opinion, to a dangerous complacency. And the idea of making art by consensus (which ends up being the fate of many new plays) is in direct opposition to the theatre I seek. I don't want art to lull me to sleep, I want art to wake me up. So, we do it differently. Of late, I returned to Audre Lorde's infallible quote, "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." I am no longer interested in trying to dismantle self-repairing elitist structures, or systems of thought, that do not in fact support the future expansion of the art form for which they claim to exist. Unwelcoming systems are maintained by individuals who make choices. I intend to leave that all be. We're making something new now.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  My heroes are people who make the room sing. My heroes are people who speak truth with power. My heroes are people who choose joy. My heroes are people who make a way out of no way. My heroes are people who share. My heroes are people who don't suffer fools. My heroes are people who take responsibility for the gifts and the powers they possess and cultivate their craft. My people seek to heal and not harm. There are many - I will omit some for brevity's sake - but I could fill your blog with names. I was fortunate enough to be mentored by several of them including Aishah Rahman, John Emigh, Robbie McCauley and the late Rebecca Rice and Kathryn Gagnon. I will never forget being a frequent visitor in the room with Paula Vogel, Anna Deavere Smith and David Savran at Brown University when they taught a workshop together - I have rarely felt such a creative charge in the air. The writers and/or performers Adrienne Kennedy, Ntozake Shange, Bridget Carpenter, Naomi Iizuka, Ruth Margraff, Erik Ehn, Jake-ann Jones, Eisa Davis. Lisa Kron. Peggy Shaw. Lois Weaver. Lisa Damour and Katie Pearl. Stacey Karen Robinson. The Rude Mechanicals. Jason Neulander. My former colleagues at Frontera@Hyde Park Theatre in Austin. Elissa Adams. The visionary artistic leaders at New Dramatists and The Playwrights' Center. Polly Carl. Many of them I get to work with - including Helga Davis, Sharon Bridgforth, Bobby Halvorson, Grisha Coleman, Barbara Duchow, Walter Kitundu, Vinie Burrows, Tea Alagíc and recently Sarah Benson. And there is a long list of students who I've had the privilege of working with who inspire me beyond belief. A few of my heroes succumbed to the shadow side of the artist's journey; and I have struggled (as have many of my colleagues) with the experience of seeing anger, bitterness and resentment consume the capacities of some artists who had been burning torches. No-one can hide from the shadow side. Yet, I have been given tremendous lessons and resonant examples by artists who found ways to transmute the negatives, too. They found ways to tap the generative capacities of darkness and ways to harness and direct their energies to make something luminous and lasting. Two legendary artists, Josephine Baker and Lena Horne continue to 'minister' to me through their life stories. There are so many to name. And that fact alone is inspiration, to me.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Theater that is all in. 100% plus. Theater that leaves you trembling and ready to greet the dawn with new resolve. Taylor Mac's The Lily's Revenge springs to mind - it used impossibility like a diver uses a diving board. Theater that knows it can conjure the holy ghost and does it fearlessly - watching Omi Osun place the headdress upon her head and dance out the ritual of becoming 'king', her eyes glinting in the twilight, sweat coating her skin like diamond dust, strut, strut, strut... in Sharon Bridgforth's delta dandi at SummerStage in Harlem last year. Theatre that depends upon the essence of its own form - the pulsing, breathing, human presence demanding and binding the willing imaginations of its audience members in a live, ephemeral moment. Watching Anna Deavere Smith do an early, stripped down, "unplugged" performance of Fires in the Mirror - no light or sound cues - just her, a table, a rolling chair, her grand arms and angular legs, her voice ricocheting off the wooden beams of Rites and Reason Theatre - we were all close enough to hear each breath - a once in a lifetime experience. Theatre that honors the virtuosity of elders and the insight of new arrivals simultaneously. Watching legendary actor Vinie Burrows and the gorgeous young actor Sonja Perryman recount the aftermath of a lynching in my own Phoenix Fabrik - Sonja as bright and urgent as a night star, Vinie, as vast as the indigo that surrounds it. Theater of quantum physics. Theatre that reminds us of who and what we really can be.

Q:  What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?

A:  Give yourself the permission and approval you seek. Make work. Make work. Make work. Develop your practice. Beware of choices you are making that are about consensus - collaboration offers you and your fellow artists an opportunity to reach beyond yourselves to find the most resonant expression for a project, yes - but that does not mean that you should be writing for other people to agree or 'like' what you write. It means you should let your work with others push you toward writing the thing that is most honest. Be willing to stand your ground - and - be willing to let go of something you thought was sure - so long as you are pursuing that most honest thing. Learn the difference between self-confidence and egotism; learn the difference between a loud voice and a talented voice. Seek humility through your constant attention to all aspects of your practice. Volunteer a measure of your time, quietly, consistently, in the service of others' work. Devour the body of work of as many playwrights as you have fingers and toes. At least. Challenge yourself to move beyond the facile language of "like and dislike" and spend time analyzing, reflecting upon and describing pieces of art (be they theatre, dance, music, visual art, film) that you say you like and that you say you hate. Learn the nature of the elements that resonate with you - ask yourself why they do. Learn what the elements are that put you off - look more deeply into your own aversion. Ask more questions than you spout answers. Drink water. Get sleep. Develop a parallel practice - get really good at something that has nothing (ostensibly) to do with theater - planting trees, baking cakes, repairing bicycles, digging wells, planning rallies, coaching... whatever. Remember you are not the first. Challenge the viral ideas of exceptionalism and the pursuit of fame. Devote yourself to becoming the best craftsperson you can become and remember that more often than not, most other artists are seeking to do the same.

Q:  Plugs please.

A:  Jomama Jones's albums RADIATE and LONE STAR are available on iTunes and CD Baby and we will release the EP SIX WAYS HOME in 2012. Stay looped in through danielalexanderjones.com.

I Interview Playwrights Part 389: Taylor Mac

Taylor Mac

Hometown: Stockton, California. Not the land of the sea but the land of tract housing and blending into nothing.

Current Town: New York City and Southfield, Ma

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  A few projects: the libretto for a composed-through musical about the ethics of small government, the philosopher Philippa Foot and her grandfather Grover Cleveland; an all ages play set in an actual mud pit that celebrates failure (and where the entire audience is dressed as frogs); a kitchen-sink drama about the end of men and the changing demographics of our country; and a twenty-four hour concert of the history of popular music.

Q:  How would you describe the process by which you create a new piece?

A:  It's always different but they tend to use pastiche, which can be confusing because pastiche is often associated with work that's hodgepodge or stolen from other sources. My work is about variance. I like to show the full range of who we are as people and the themes I'm discussing in the work. If we're honest great works of art are often in the genre of pastiche: "War and Peace" is a pastiche of romance novel, critical theory, and history. One could make the same argument (and I do) for any Shakespeare play. My plays often squish genre's, styles, and forms together with the hope that by doing so I'll create work that honors (by acknowledging) the past and present but whose goal is to help dream the culture forward.

Q:  If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?

A:  I was just reading Steve Jobs obituary in the Times this morning and when asked about market research he said, "It's not the consumers job to know what they want". I've been trying to get the theater community to recognize this for awhile now. We ask our audience to tell us what kind of theater we should be making way too much. Instead I'd like us to become experts on the needs and wants of humanity. That's our job. A true curiosity and a disciplined exploration of what's under the surface. If we ask the audience what they want, they'll tell us to give them what they know, which keeps the work stuck in tropes, nostalgia, and safety. If we do our job and figure out what our audience needs in the present moment, we dream the culture forward.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Plato, Molière, Shakespeare, Wilde and his sister Wilder (Thorton), Shaw, Rice, Williams, Kondoleon, Ludlum, Eichelberger, Papp, and Harry Hayes are the ones whose work has inspired me but who I never met. Elizabeth Swados, Morgan Jenness, Justin Bond, Michael Warren Powell, Lanford Wilson, Romulus Linney, Mercedes Ruehl, Bill Irwin, Karen Finley, Sam Shepard, Naomi Wallace, Penny Arcade, and David Greenspan are the ones who I've been taught by, encountered, and/or admired from a distance.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  When theater reveals something I didn't know about the world, my understanding of myself and the others around me; when it reminds me of something I'd forgotten about the world, myself and others around me; and when it creates a community out of the audience and players, allows them to be present in the moment and inspires them to further the conversation the work put forth.

Q:  What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?

A:  Write, write, write. Make, make, make. Share, share, share. And whatever you do, don't ask for permission to be creative.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Three upcoming concerts at Joe's Pub in NYC (Oct 16th, Oct 23rd, and Nov 6th) and two upcoming productions of "The Lily's Revenge" (one in New Orleans in the spring of 2012 and one in Edinburgh in August of 2012).

I Interview Playwrights Part 388: Sharyn Rothstein

Sharyn Rothstein

Hometown: Avon, CT

Current Town: NYC

Q:  Tell me about The Invested.

A:  As the economy started imploding (the first time), I noticed that the few women who were at the top of major Wall Street banks and firms seemed to be losing or walking away from their jobs. Whistleblowers tend to disproportionately be women, so I thought that was an interesting correlation – one that nobody seemed to be talking about.

I was also interested in generational differences when it comes to money and Wall Street – when I graduated college in 2003 it felt like anybody, even a playwright with a sociology degree, could go get a job at a hedge fund and make ridiculous amounts of money. Obviously, there was a reason it felt that way.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  My newest play is a three-person comedy about amateur actors putting on a historical melodrama about Alexander Hamilton in an Applebee’s. I’ve also been working on a musical comedy based on the biblical story of Esther for a couple of years now… we’ll be workshopping that again soon. My play March, about two teenagers who meet on an online fantasy game, will be produced in April.

Q:  Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.

A:  When other kid’s parents were telling them – or telling them without telling them – that they had to pursue something practical, my amazing mother (also a writer) told me, “Somebody has to be Steven Speilberg.”

Q:  If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?

A:  The virgin/whore problem with new plays. Every theater only wants to produce a world premiere, so once a play has been produced – unless it’s gotten tremendous press – it basically becomes the sad girl at the semi-formal who nobody will dance with anymore. It’s unfair to writers, who want to see their work produced as much as possible, and it’s unfair to theaters, who are missing out on wonderful plays that have had the benefit of going through a production.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I guess I’m old school: I love well-structured plays with complex characters and some funny to them, even if they’re not comedies. I love playwrights who have the guts to put whole, weird, complicated characters on the page and I love directors and actors who aren’t afraid to bring those characters alive.

Q:  What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?

A:  Finding directors you love and trust is just like dating. You’re going to kiss some frogs, but when you find your prince – or princess – hold them tight and never let them go. Find opportunities to work with them. The same goes for actors – your plays will always be better if you know and respect the other artists you’re working with.

And if you can, find a community. I’ve been very lucky to be a member of Youngblood and Ars Nova Play Group, but if you don’t have access to a group that already exists, start your own. Getting feedback from other writers you trust will make your work better – and hanging out with other playwrights will ensure that you’re never sober for long.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  My BFF’s show is at LCT3 next month. All-American by Julia Brownell. It’s a wonderful – and wonderfully funny – play. Check it out.

I Interview Playwrights Part 387: Jon Kern

photo by RJ Tolan
Jon Kern

Hometown: New York (Manhattan)

Current Town: New York (Brooklyn)

Q:  Tell me about We in Silence Hear a Whisper.

A:  We in Silence Hear a Whisper tells the story of a young refugee girl trying to survive in Sudan as she’s pursued by the malevolent Man on a Horse. To do the Hollywood thing, the play is No Country for Old Men meets Alice in Wonderland meets a Nicholas Kristoff NYT column on the genocide in Sudan. My first ideas for the play came in 2004, when I was reading those Kristoff columns. I didn’t begin writing the play until 2008 when I had a deadline for an EST/Youngblood reading. I wanted to see if I could write about something as soul crushing as genocide while still having the elements of good entertainment: humor, action, and empathy. An older draft of the play is responsible for my being awarded a Van Lier Fellowship at New Dramatists, which basically stopped me from quitting play writing. It’s very gratifying to see the play finally get produced [thanks to Red Fern and Melanie Williams] after many, many, many rewrites.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I’m presently working on rewrites for my chopsocky multi-ethnic identity play Tapefaces: Legend of a Kung Fu Master – Season 1 DVD with the director Sherri Barber for Ars Nova’s ANT Fest. I’m waiting around as my agent shops my best full-length Modern Terrorism, or They Who Want to Kill Us and How We Learn to Love Them, which is its own kind of Beckettian work. Currently, I’m helping the playwright Carla Ching hone her play The Sugar House at the Edge of the Wilderness as dramaturg/drinking buddy. Soon, I’m to begin developing a new play with the Civilians R&D Group on internet addiction. I also have an outstanding [as in late] Sloan Commission, which makes it hard for me to look EST’s Graeme Gillis in the eye. And my agent wants me to work on this comedy about a college football so he doesn’t have to try to sell chopsocky multi-ethnic identity plays to a wary off-Broadway community.

Q:  Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.

A:  The hardest I ever worked in school – elementary or high school – was on crafting jokes. And I was a nerd. I used to have to double bag my textbooks in two brown Macy’s Cellar bags because my backpack was already packed to the ripping point. The first instance of hard work was in 5th grade, when for parents’ day, I wrote a commercial sketch for Billy Bob’s Bar-b-que Sauce, a parody of the Folger’s crystals commercials where they would surprise customers with the reveal that the coffee they ordered was in fact Folger’s! Replace “Folger’s” with “Billy Bob’s Bar-b-que Sauce,” add a bunch of kids doing over-the-top Southern accents, and you get the idea. It was this moment that I first knew I wanted to be a writer. The second instance of hard work was in senior year of high school when I stayed up all night crafting comedy bits from The New York Times articles for a presentation on The Daily Show. Many years later I found out a friend of mine didn’t believe I wrote the jokes. Accusations of plagiarism: the highest of compliments. From these two experiences I realized the only thing I can conceive worth spending hours and hours of energy and effort to do well is entertaining other people. Everything else, such as making money or being an adult human being, seems unimportant.

Q:  If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?

A:  “Theater” is not a monolith. There are many different kinds of and forms of theater going on, each with their own specific issues to address. I’m not sure there is a single panacea for the multi-faced commercial art known as “theater.” If I had to reach, the one thing I can think of that applies somewhat universally is the lack of well-executed sword fights. Sword fights have been exciting entertainment for millennia. Anything that wishes to label itself as “theater” could stand a few more sword fights. I too am guilty of this.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  I could give a list of famous names [Chekhov, Pinter, Churchill] or slightly less famous names [Lloyd Suh, New Dramatists], or seem sentimental and say my parents, whose self-dramatizing nature and emotional neglect truly helped to create most of my characters’ voices. [I love you, Mom and Dad!] But instead I choose to interpret this question with the answer, “My favorite theatrical superhero is Nightcrawler: he could teleport, his appearance made him an outsider, and I believe he quoted from Shakespeare a couple of times in the Alan Davis run on Excalibur.”

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I fell out of my front row seat from laughing when I saw Quinn Bauriedel, Geoff Sobelle, and Trey Lyford’s Machines Machines Machines Machines Machines Machines Machines Machines at Here Arts Center. I also loved, and still think upon, the Foundry Theater’s production of Ariana Reines’s Telephone. The connecting thread between these two shows is lost on me, and I’m inside my own head.

Q:  What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?

A:  Learn to cook. It saves you money, and makes for better parties. Also, don’t be afraid to ask people for assistance, even if you feel they are more successful than you, and don’t get discouraged if they say no. Even when they say no, they wish they could say yes.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  We in Silence Hear a Whisper runs from October 5 - 23 at The Theater at the 14th Street Y, 344 East 14th Street, produced by Red Fern Theater Company. For tickets and showtimes and other such details, go to here: http://redferntheatre.org/p_we_in_silence_hear_a_whisper.asp

Tapefaces: Legend of a Kung Fu Master – Season 1 DVD will be a part of Ars Nova’s ANT Fest on Nov. 15. You can get tickets, and see a disturbing photo, here: http://www.arsnovanyc.com/index.php/lineup/149-tapefaces-legend-of-a-kung-fu-master-season-1-dvd

Carla Ching’s The Sugar House at the Edge of the Wilderness runs from November 8 - December 4 at The Connelly Theater, 220 E 4th St., produced by the Ma-Yi Theater Company. To found out more about this play [which I am proud to be associated with], go here: http://www.ma-yitheatre.org

I Interview Playwrights Part 386: Sylvan Oswald

Photograph by Geoff Green -- geoffgreen.com

Sylvan Oswald

Hometown: Philadelphia

Current Town: Brooklyn

Q:  Tell me about Nightlands.

A:  NIGHTLANDS is the story of two women, a working-class Jewish housewife and an African-American astrologer, whose unlikely bond is tested on the eve of Philadelphia’s 1964 riots. It’s highly fictionalized and stylized but based on the story of how my grandmother learned astrology – she actually studied in the 1970s – but it was still somewhat scandalous. She went on to have her own radio show and teach a bunch of people who are still practicing writing horoscopes for newspapers and such. She made a set of teach-yourself-astrology instructional tapes (soundtrack: “Neptune, the mystic” from Gustav Holst’s The Planets) and sent all her grandchildren astrology tapes on our birthdays – telling us about the months ahead. She’d say amazing things like “make sure no one is trying to hoodwink you.” One or two of her lines made it into the play.

Her teacher was a brilliant woman with expertise in all manner of spiritual subjects including Kabbalah. As part of her apprenticeship, my grandmother would drive her teacher to these astrology conferences in Atlantic City. Can you imagine the sea air, the deep talk. That scene’s for the film adaptation if I could be so lucky.

In writing the play I wrestled a lot with how, as a white writer, to tell this story in its period, with all its taboos, racial strife, and repression, while creating nuanced and complex characters. I spent a lot of time thinking about framing and historical inaccuracy because I was less interested in portraying repressed states than in dramatizing their upheaval.

The production I’m building with Tamilla Woodard, our designers, and New Georges has a feeling of suspending the characters in space and time. It’s set in “a memory of North Philadelphia,” so there’s that sense of that one chair from your grandparents’ house, it’s nubby fabric, and not the whole house. That one radio. Her skirt. Sound and light refract as if reaching us across generations.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  A new play called PROFANITY. I put some of the process images up on my new site (sylvanoswald.com) even though the play is still in the works. It’s about some real estate agents in Philadelphia in the 1950s who are selling land that doesn’t exist. It’s based in part on my shyster great uncles and the neighborhood where my mom grew up, the Logan section of Philadelphia, where all the houses sank into the ground. It’s the last play in my mysteries trilogy with SUN RA and NIGHTLANDS. I’ve been doing all this thinking about self-fashioned spiritualities and how they can be alternately nationalistic, violent, or queer.

I’m also working on a music-theater piece called ZOETROPE with Alec Duffy and Mimi Lien. It’s a song cycle about the increasing boundarylessness of our lives as the realization continues to dawn on most of the country that being an imperial power may be a bad idea – and of course the searchability of all our selves online contributes to this feeling of privacy and sovreignty turned inside out. Living rooms appear in offices, kitchens appear outside, groups of people sleep in the same bed. It’s a cast of seven people, a range of ages, races and ethnicities, and genders. They sing tuneful songs that, if you listen closely, don’t quite make sense. Kind of Gertrude Stein meets musical theater. We’re inspired by Robert Ashley, Meredith Monk, and Einstein on the Beach.

Also, I wrote a very dark and strange play during a recent silent retreat led by Erik Ehn and the Pataphysics crew down in Texas. It was 107 degrees most days.

Q:  Tell me about Play A Journal of Plays.

A:  Jordan Harrison and I started PLAY A JOURNAL OF PLAYS in grad school at Brown in part to process all the incredible experimental writing we were encountering. The other part was suddenly realizing that as emerging artists we were in this awkward bottom-of-the-totem-pole position where we had to ask for things and send away by mail and wait to be anointed or something and that just wasn’t going to be very satisfying or pro-active. Completely out of our control. So we wanted to emerge with an offering of sorts. We wanted to emerge participating, contributing. Already giving.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  In no particular order: Gertrude Stein, Suzan-Lori Parks, Adrienne Kennedy, Paula Vogel, Erik Ehn, Mac Wellman, Jordan Harrison, Karinne Keithley, Anne Washburn, Big Dance Theater, Dan Hurlin.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Emotionally truthful, aesthetically rigorous, politically risky, underrepresented voices and viewpoints, ethically engaged in its choices, visually tuned, physically virtuosic.

Q:  What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?

A:  Don’t wait for something to happen to you. Reach out. Show up. Make friends and take care of them. Make mentors and take care of them. Turn off the internet. Don't rush to understand your writing.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Come see NIGHTLANDS directed by Tamilla Woodard produced by New Georges at HERE running Oct 5-29, opening night Oct 10!

I Interview Playwrights Part 385: Mickey Birnbaum

Mickey Birnbaum

Hometown:  Los Angeles.

Current Town:  Los Angeles.

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  A play about backyard wrestling, and another one about the American Revolution that's kind of a cross between "The Romans in Britain" and "Our Town." I'm also starting up as an MFA student this month to earn a writing degree and hopefully embrace the life of an academic in my non-existent free time.

Q:  How does your film work inform your playwriting and vice versa?

A:  The world keeps getting more visual every day, so we better speak its language. When I started writing plays I purposely used movie rhythms -- short scenes, impossibly epic settings -- especially because I am usually trying to write for a relatively young audience that would just as soon be watching movies on their iPhones. Then for a while I got ornery and wrote things that looked marginally more like standard plays, with some unity of time and space. Now, I'm ready to go back to exploding time and space. As far as the film work goes, I'm trying to migrate into more of a TV sensibility, where story flows from character, and language trumps visual.

Q:  How would you describe the LA theater scene?

A:  The most talented people I've ever come across, and some of the most generous and supportive. This being such a big city, full of nooks and crannies, it's sometimes hard to find or just reach some of the best companies doing the most ground-breaking work. Like, it's weird to find a stellar production in a well-equipped waiver theater in a mini-mall on the eastern stretch of Anaheim, but so it goes. Sometimes I think if the community were more centralized, it would thrive more, but who really knows? In any case, theater artists who persevere in the face of a failing economy, public apathy, and lack of institutional support are heroes, as far as I'm concerned. Or maybe that's just the definition of an artist in America, unfortunately.

Q:  Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.

A:  One of my earliest memories is being four years old and standing outside the LA County Courthouse, and my mom telling me I had a new name. She had fled cross-country out of spite to prevent my dad from having visitation after their divorce. She wouldn't talk about him thereafter. It took me 35 years to find him. He was a great guy. A couple years after that name change, my mom and her date (who became my step-dad) took me to see Bob Barker's Marionette Theater. Those are kind of like the north & south poles of my life.

Q:  If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?

A:  Realistically, I'd like to see the larger, more successful institutions nurturing smaller companies and writers with promise. Unrealistically, I'd like to see new plays in every theater in the country, playing to packed houses.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  The usual thugs, Miller, Pinter, Beckett, Thornton Wilder above all. More recently, Franz Xaver Kroetz, Howard Brenton, Philip Ridley, Martin McDonagh, John Steppling, and about a million others. All my colleagues are better writers than I, and thank god I have the opportunity to learn from them. At the risk of playing favorites, Jacqueline Wright's the most fearless playwright I know, and an amazing actress as well. I've worked with her a lot, lucky me.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  Where narrative & non-linear collide. Where there is deep, deep feeling. Where realism and surrealism mesh. Where I don't know where the stage ends and I begin.

Q:  What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?

A:  Read Shakespeare. Find a playwright/teacher to learn from, someone whose lineage you want to follow. Think of them as a Shaolin monk, and you the apprentice. Renounce the world, it will not reward you for wanting to be a playwright, and embrace the art. Raise a family, Dig in the ground. Recognize you are mortal. Do not try to write for film or television until you are in your forties and have a voice that is unassailable by the influence of idiots. Be original. If you want to be a genre writer, go immediately to film or television, do not pass go, do not collect the two hundred dollars you would get for your play. If you can't go on, go on. Kick against the pricks. Fail, as often as possible. Be vulnerable. Eat well and exercise. Learn to rest in contradictions. Negative capability is your friend.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Find me among more illustrious company at www.dogear.org.

upcoming for Adam

Hi all,

I have a web series being taped this fall called Compulsive Love that I'm really excited about.  If you can spare a few bucks, I'd really appreciate it.  Every cent helps.  http://www.indiegogo.com/Compulsive-Love-1#team

Next a reading of Elsewhere in Houston Oct 3: http://www.mildredsumbrella.com/mu/Mildreds_Umbrella.html  (this will be the 7th or so reading.  We did a production in Florida a couple months ago that went well and there will be a NYC production this winter.)

A production of Fat Cat Killers in Philly starting October 26.
http://www.flashpointtheatre.org/

More shows coming up I don't have dates for yet-- 2 in LA, 4 more in NYC, one in Las Vegas, one at a college in WI, and one probably in Istanbul.  I'll let you know more when I do.